A Professional Email Adress

New Member

I am currently trying to score an internship/job, and wondering what kind of email address I should put on my resume.

Is it true a "work" email address and "professional" email address are two separate things?

When someone shows you their business card, and it has their work email address on it...isn't this their professional email address?

Or what is meant, is, that some work email addresses are professional while others are not? Like let's say you work for McDonalds or Toys R Us and as a result, you get an email address at their domain for free. Obviously, this would not look like a professional email address, but in places like a county library or other government-funded organization that involves professional work, it would be the opposite right?

So just wondering what the consensus is. For example I have an email address with a county library, where I work. Can this serve as my professional email to put on my resume, while doing a job search, or should I have a "job search only" email address?

Noob Whisperer

Excellent question. I suppose as a general rule it is probably not a good idea to use your email address that is provided by your current employer on a resume that you are sending out to look for employment elsewhere. If for no other reason than that email address is not really yours, in that it may be subject to examination by your employer as well as perhaps other professional constraints based on your employers policies regarding its' use. Additionally if you loose or quit your job that email address would no longer be valid.
Likewise, using an email address provide by your ISP would also be subject to changes if you decided to sometime in the future to change providers.
If you do not have your own website or your website does not provide for email addresses associated with that domain, then I would suggest using either a Gmail or Hotmail account which will follow you anywhere and allow access through a web browser from anywhere as well.
Hope this helps
Kind Regards.
Randy

New Member

Hm...I will ask my employer if I could use it then, and ask the employer if I can use it for that purpose. Thanks for letting me know it would expire were I to quit the job, but it would be valid until I get the new job. Then again, that email would no longer work, since I'd need to update it with the new employer, so yeah, Gmail it is.

Next question. After researching the entire day, I realized that the best kind of professional email, is one that has both your first and last name in it, preferably one that includes your entire first and last name (in the form of "[email protected]") and not just your first inital and entire last name, but would an underscore be a valid substitute for the period? I love using underscores, and looks more correct anyway, since there's supposed to be a space between your first and last name, and at times when that's not allowed, an underscore is supposed to be used, but the period is more commonly used...so just wondering if using an underscore is awkward.

Third question, I was wondering how I should make a professional username as well. Some companies, require you to make an account on their website if you want to apply for an internship or job. I made the mistake of registering of "MJOLNIR" on there, and I can't edit that username, so meh, I'll just make another account.

Would a professional username just be "firstname lastname" with that space between them? I'm guessing so, and of course the first and last name being capitalized.

New Member

Noob Whisperer

Probably because there is no single good answer to your question. In many instances it's a case of "All the good ones have already been taken". I ususally get around the issue by including my middle initial when creating such accounts. So if your name is William Jefferson Clinton then your email address would be [email protected] some variations might be required like [email protected] etc. Whether to use a dot versus and underscore or hyphen is way too subjective to address and as you've already mentioned may or not be supported by your provider so your options may be restricted. Once your email address is in someone's contact list or address book it's generally promptly forgotten and is either produced by an autocomplete function or picked from a list, based on your actual name anyway, so while I can understand your interest in wanting to appear as professional as possible, I'm not sure that worrying over this type of minutiae is productive in the long run. Pick an email address, own it, be proud of it and then forget it and move on just like everyone else will.
Kindest Regards.
Randy.